Have wok will travel: how Thai expat spices up world's hot spots

Whenever the smoke starts to clear in a conflict zone, Lalita Thongngamkan is bound to show up. Her new Thai restaurant in Kabul has instantly become the fashionable place to be seen in the Afghan capital.

At Lai Thai, in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood once preferred by al-Qa'ida leaders and Taliban commanders, slim waitresses in silk sarongs help guests out of their bulletproof vests and dish up green seafood curry under fairy lights in the walled garden. Bulky bodyguards wait patiently in dozens of foreign 4x4s parked outside.

Bringing Thai food to the world's hot spots has become a career for Ms Thongngamkan, a divorced mother of three who left Bangkok for Cambodia and just kept going. She has opened restaurants in Somalia, Rwanda, East Timor and Kosovo, and after just four months in Kabul is already contemplating a new branch of Lai Thai in Baghdad.

"I am not afraid," says Ms Thongngamkan, a feisty 52-year-old. "This is just a small restaurant run by an old woman. Nobody wants to disturb me. People only die once. You cannot die twice, so there's no need to worry about death." As a service to her clients, she hired two Kalashnikov-wielding Afghans to guard the restaurant gate. "Each of my girls carries a pistol, and knows how to use it," she adds.

Sao, the vivacious hostess who handles much of the shopping, also carries a dagger in a sheath. The knife is handy when dignitaries request melons carved into fanciful Thai shapes, and it keeps gawking local men at a distance. They respect a woman who can wield a weapon.

While some urban women in Kabul abandoned their burqas after the fall of the Taliban, strict modesty still prevails. Most Afghan women wear baggy trousers under long tunics, and will not look directly at a man unrelated to them. To be greeted by a lipsticked smile and led to a table by a slinky Thai hostess stuns most first-time clients, even foreigners who have become used to the relentlessly masculine culture here.

"Once you close the door behind you at Lai Thai, you enter a different world," Ms Thongngamkan says. Her Kabul restaurant seats 70 and is packed every night with foreign aid workers, diplomats and security staff who want a change from hearty Afghan mutton and bread. Ten French soldiers eat lunch there seven days a week. There's a takeaway service, too, plus a traditional Thai masseuse for the war-weary.

The only place the business ever faltered was in Sydney, where Ms Thongngamkan's three children attend boarding school. There was too much competition from more than 200 other Thai restaurants. Lalita packed up her wok and headed for East Timor in 1999 and has never looked back. In Kosovo, massage and saunas have been added to the successful formula of spicy food and souvenir T-shirts made to order back in Bangkok.

As soon as commercial flights start up to a former war zone, her interest perks up. "It means there will be lots of expats with hardship pay and no place to spend it," she says. "For nice food, there is always a market." She scans the internet, and consults aid agencies for tips on safety in her new venues. Licensing can be a hurdle, but not for long. "All problems can be solved," Ms Thongngamkan says brightly.